Thine is The Kingdom

Thursday, February 19, 2015

In response to Rob Bell: the mainstream American church may indeed soon embrace same-sex marriage. But the mainstream American church is not synonymous with Biblical Christianity. Scripture is clear, and the failure of those who claim the Name of Jesus to live by His Words does not change the Truth of His Words. Homosexuality is a sin. A forgivable sin. A sin like many other sins. But a sin. And it is not loving to hide people from the Truth. (Lev. 18:22, Rom. 1)﻿

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Why do I love Christmas? Well... I love the family time. I love the lights. The traditions. The decorations and the music and the eggnog and frosty breath swirling around the rosy cheeks and shining eyes of carolers and the memories written in the smells of candy and cold and Jimmy Stewart saying "I wanna live again."

But my favorite thing about Christmas is that Christmas is a celebration and proclamation that the Father gave His Son and His Spirit to and for His subjects who had fought against His reign; that the High King of Heaven came down to earth and slept in a feeding trough; that the eternal Son of God bound Himself in time and the immortal, invincible Christ died, and that that life and that death and the 33 years in which Jesus walked this earth served as the midpoint in a two-part story, changing the watchword of History from "one day" to "this day," crashing down from sky to earth among the song of heaven and nature and shattering to pieces every man and every kingdom which stood between the King and His Kingdom, and leavening the earth 'til His blessings flow as far as the curse is found.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Psalm 127 and Matthew 6 encourage believers to have faith- a faith that removes worry and stress; the faith of a child who never wonders how his daddy is going to put food on the table come next mealtime, but rather lives under the happy assumption that his daddy has everything under control.

The Lord gave me a few opportunities this week to practice such faith in a very practical way.
Many of you have probably heard about my latest album project (if you haven't, here you go: http://resoundingmusic.com/the-womb-of-the-dawn/ ). It was scheduled to come out Friday; I'd been pumping that release date for a long time in the marketing of the project; had a bunch of people "going" to the event. Thursday night, I hit the sack planning to make a few polishing tweaks on a few tracks and get everything uploaded in short order.

Friday morning came and brought with it the White Screen of Death. Bad news for album release day. Lots of visual display issues for my computer; couldn't even log in on some attempts. There had been signs leading up to this before, but nothing this bad. By God's grace, a phone call with Apple tech support resulted in getting everything up and running properly quickly, and the computer performed well all day long; album submitted to CDBaby, marketing finished, I shut her down. Had even worse problems every time I tried to start up after that. God held it together (it's really inexplicable that it performed so well on Friday) for just as long as I needed it.
Then, next day, I was supposed to mix a track for #BoundMovie (on one of those "The film festival is coming! The film festival is coming!" deadlines). I went to bed Friday night knowing that the next morning I had some serious tech support to do before I'd be able to do so; called Apple again, and we couldn't fix it in-house; I'd have to go in for repairs. And the nearest store that could do such a thing is about an hour away from my location.
Drove in, they had the part we thought might be the issue, switched it out, it appears that it really was the issue, they sent me on my way, and by about 4:00 in the afternoon I was back up and running. (Oh, and before anybody makes Mac jokes, it was a graphics card that had been serving me faithfully since 2008. So there's that.)

Add to that that Joseph Santoyo﻿ had prepared the vocal tracks so well, and the thing was done with time to spare.

On roller-coaster events like that, I think we have two reactionary options:

Friday, November 28, 2014

The work on this album was done over the course of years... with revisions, live recordings- the scope of this project dwarfs anything I've ever done before. Praise God. It has been a blast.
Get the album here.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Dad's sermon yesterday was on holiday peace. What is the foundation of peace around the family table?

Is it our ability to bubble wrap truth, sweep sin under the rug, and dull the sharp edges of reality before they make their way into our conversations?

That, of course, is no peace at all; doesn't matter how good the turkey is, because all anyone can taste is the eggshells they've been walking on.

"Better is a dry morsel and quietness with it than a house full of feasting with strife." (Pr. 17:1)

But there's the other option. There's peace founded upon Truth; unity forged in a common, fiery passion for the Kingdom of God. Kindness is only true kindness when paired with truth; love is only true love when it works in terms of God's Word.

And that peace? I'd take bread and water and that peace a thousand times over a feast of eggshells.

But the kingdom of darkness is always asking the Kingdom of Light to settle for the first kind of peace. And not just asking; demanding. Take the teeth out of the Gospel. Be the Wilsonian hailstorm of cotton balls. Ignore the elephant in the room, the lumps underneath the rug, and the sounds coming from the closet and behind the couch. Jesus would want you to be nice, after all.

Ssssshhhhhhhh.

That's not love; that's not peace; that's not joy; and that's not what Christ calls us to.

Doesn't mean we should speak truth without kindness. But it does mean we shouldn't speak kindness without truth.

Light has no fellowship with darkness; there are no treaties in the war between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Our love for others should cause us to call them into the Kingdom- not to follow them out of It.

Doesn't necessarily mean that we can't still enjoy the company of family and friends who are at war with Christ (though it may mean that). It does, however, mean that we cannot enjoy that company on the devil's terms.

If Jesus makes you uncomfortable, then I hope when you are around me you are uncomfortable.

“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you." (John 15:18)

Our goal shouldn't be to get people to hate us. But with brothers and sisters across the globe being tortured and beheaded for their faith in Christ, shame on us if we miss opportunities to be persecuted just a little bit for Jesus because we're too nice to be loving.

Because Jesus, and only Jesus, brings true peace, true love, true joy to the world.

Red Rain

A Novella by Aubrey Hansen

Followers

The Truth of the Matter

I am going to assume throughout this blog that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17)." I shall assume that God has something to say about everything, and that what He has to say is what needs to be said. If someone wants to argue this, then I shall adress it specifically, but until such a time, I shall not bother defending the supremacy and infallibility of Scripture- I assume it.